During the early stages of this project, creator Wally Coberg was supported by several consultants who contributed significantly to his efforts to write, submit and ultimately secure the original NEH Development Grant that helped launch the project. Among them were:

"These last days have been the best, the brightest of my life, and when I return from New York all the old pain will finally be left behind."

So spoke Edgar Allan Poe as he set sail from Richmond bound for New York via Baltimore. Four days later he was dead, never having given voice to what happened to him. And so the creator of the detective story was himself at the center of his own mystery.